Hoosier History: On This Day, January 4

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The Queen Mary arriving in New York Harbor with thousands of U.S. soldiers on board. (Photo: U.S. Navy archives)

Hoosier History: On This Day, January 4

The Queen Mary arriving in New York Harbor with thousands of U.S. soldiers on board. (Photo: U.S. Navy archives)

Today is Friday, Jan. 4, the fourth day of 2019 with 361 days to follow.

Today’s Hoosier Highlights in History:

On Jan. 4, 1946, former Sgt. Robert H. Glass, of South Bend, for the first time gets to see his seven-month-old triplet sons who arrived in New York harbor aboard the Queen Mary with an escort of 11,001 nursemaids: their war-bride mother Emily – an American Red Cross worker, and 11,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division who were being brought home from their World War II mission. As the packed vessel docked, it may have been the “Grey Ghost’s” proudest moment, according to a newspaper account which also said the description of ‘proud father’ fit Glass as if the day were made for him. The babies, in bassinets, were carried down the gangplank by three GI’s. The high-spirited 82nd “adopted” the children during the crossing from Europe, collecting about $3,000 as an educational fund for them. (Photo: NEA Acme)

On Jan. 4, 1864, the 35th Indiana Regiment of Volunteers returns to Indianapolis on veteran furlough from the Civil War after fighting in the Battle of Lookout Mountain. The Indianapolis Journal reported that only about 200 of the “battle worn heroes” of what was known as the 1st Fighting Irish, because it was made up of mostly Irish Americans, had lived to return home. A public reception was held, which the Journal described as “a strange reunion, a grand welcome and a solemn funeral.” The Indianapolis Sentinel lauded the regiment as the “brave 35th” with “an imperishable name.” They would return to the battlefield just over a month later. (Photo: Battle of Lookout Mountain by Kurz & Allison, 1889 lithograph/Wikimedia Commons)

On Jan. 4, 1880, the Lafayette Car Works is founded by Benjamin F. Masten of Indianapolis and begins operation manufacturing rail cars in a 10-acre factory complex in Lafayette. It built over 600 coal cars that year for the Ohio Central Railroad. It would become a major employer of hundreds in Tippecanoe County for about 15 years, building about 13 railroad cars a day – or 4,000 a year – like this 1888 Soo Line Caboose (pictured left) – selling for an average of $500. (Photo courtesy: Heritage Historical Society)

On this date elsewhere:

In 1896, Utah was admitted as the 45th state.

In 1904, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gonzalez v. Williams, ruled that Puerto Ricans were not aliens and could enter the United States freely; however, the court stopped short of declaring them citizens. (Puerto Ricans received U.S. citizenship in March 1917.)

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, called for legislation to provide assistance for the jobless, elderly, impoverished children and the handicapped.

In 1943, for the second time, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin made the cover of TIME as the magazine’s 1942 “Man of the Year.”

In 1951, during the Korean War, North Korean and Communist Chinese forces recaptured the city of Seoul (sohl).

In 1960, author and philosopher Albert Camus (al-BEHR’ kah-MOO’) died in an automobile accident in Villeblevin, France, at age 46.

In 1964, Pope Paul VI began a visit to the Holy Land, the first papal pilgrimage of its kind.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his State of the Union address in which he outlined the goals of his “Great Society.”

In 1974, President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

In 1987, 16 people were killed when an Amtrak train bound from Washington, D.C., to Boston collided with Conrail locomotives that had crossed into its path from a side track in Chase, Maryland.

In 1995, the 104th Congress convened, the first entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era.

In 2002, Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, was killed by small-arms fire during an ambush in eastern Afghanistan; he was the first American military death from enemy fire in the war against terrorism.

In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that Jose Padilla (hoh-ZAY’ puh-DIL’-uh), held for 3 1/2 years as an “enemy combatant,” could be transferred to civilian authorities in Miami.

Ten years ago: New Mexico Gov.Bill Richardson announced he was withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama’s commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation into how some of his political donors had won a lucrative state contract. (Prosecutors later declined to bring charges against Richardson.) A female suicide bomber struck Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad, killing 38.

Five years ago: The city center of Iraq’s Fallujah fell completely into the hands of fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State in Iraq and Levant. Thirty-one workers were killed in the collapse of a building under construction in Canacona, Goa, in southern India.

One year ago: The Trump administration moved to vastly expand offshore drilling from the Atlantic to the Arctic oceans with a five-year plan that would open up federal waters off of California for the first time in decades and possibly open new areas of oil and gas exploration along the East Coast. A massive winter storm roared into the East Coast, dumping as much as 17 inches of snow in some areas. The Dow Jones Industrial Average burst through the 25,000 mark, closing at 25,075.13 just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Ray Thomas, a founding member of the British rock group the Moody Blues, died at his home south of London at the age of 76, months before the band would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.